"As thick as pea soup
... what a shitty cliche." Thought Detective Chris Vincent as he
drove over the Breezy River Bridge on a very foggy morning, his
partner Frank Flemings was too busy in the passenger seat nursing
a headache caused by sinus problems to notice. "Maybe you should
take the day off?" Chris told him. "And miss all the excitement
in this lively region?" Frank replied sarcastically. Chris was a
thirty two year old sleuth for the Tri-County Homicide Bereau
while Frank was in his mid-fifties, Chris had garnered a
reputation due to his striking resemblance to Elvis even though
he was more a Roy Orbison guy, Frank was shorter guy and a bit
fatter, sporting a black bushy moustache and curly black hair,
Chris almost always wore a raincoat and Frank always wore a gray
suit.

The South Vale Motel sat
directly by the Breezy River which ran up into Georgia, it had
it's own boat launch and boasted about having cable on a wooden
sign out front. At this moment the place was cordoned off with
police tape with special interest placed on the swimming pool in
the middle of the parking lot, and the
bare-all-except-for-a-pair-of-tacky-boxers corpse in the bloody
water. Chris parked and got out, both had their badges out in
their coat pockets, Sal Spinosa who was a young rookie on the
Timucua City police force, half-Italian and all
nervous.

"What do we got, Sal?"
Chris asked.

"Well, we have a body of
course, maid found him floating while she was making her rounds,
no identification yet."

"You haven't even dug
him out of the water, Sal." Frank said.

"Well ... no, you see ..
I uh ... I uh called Thornton and well I figured he might not
like ..."

"Jesus, he will be real
swell with you for that." Chris said.

"Well, I had to call a
coroner ..."

"But you could've dug
the damn body out first, you know how Thornton is." Chris
said.

A small, slightly beat
up tan sedan had pulled up, an old man dressed in a cowboy getup
complete with hat and boots got out, looking very
angry.

"Good morning sir." A
passing officer had said.

"No it's not a good
morning son, it's a damn shitty one if you ask me." Thornton
replied before walking over to the guys after taking a
spit.

"So, good to see you
Chris, everything going allright?" Thornton
said.

"I guess everything is
.. yet."

"I see whay ya' mean,
Chrissie. How about you Frankie, read any good diet books
lately?" Frank was mortified for a second but shrugged it off,
same-old Thornton. "And you sonny, got the body out of the pool
yet?"

"Well no sir, I was uh
... I was waiting for you." Thornton looked like he was about to
have a cow. "Son, you need to grow a backbone if you want to stay
in this line of work, no use waiting for an old fart like me, now
get your ass up there and dig him out!" Thornton snapped. Sal had
jumped a bit then darted up the stairs, it didn't take long
before the body was out of the water.

"Let's see here .."
Thornton said while kneeling down by the corpse, he turned him
over to reveal the small hole where a bullet had lodged into the
corpse's skull, plus a few beat marks. "Looks like we got a real
homicide with this one, looks like he's been beaten badly, maybe
some broken bones, the bullet wound ten to one is what croaked
him though. Relatively young 'un too, probably drug violence,
pretty brutal." Thornton got back up.

"Hey Sal, where's the
owner and the maid right now?" Chris asked. "Uh, they are in the
office." Sal replied.

"Were gonna' head over
there, allright Thornton?" Chris asked. "Yeah, might as well,
nothin' to see here, gonna' get the meat wagon 'round here to
cart him off, you help me here sonny .." Sal walked over to help
Thornton as Chris and Frank walked over to the
office.

Not much was gotten out
the maid or hotel owner, all of the current guests were accounted
for so whoever the victim was he wasn't a guest, considering his
condition he was brought there which didn't add up much as why
not just dump him in the river behind them? He was shot there
though due to the amount of blood in the water so a silencer had
to have been used for anyone to not hear any shots, none of the
current guests couldn't have much to do with it, a few elderly
couples and a fisherman from up north with a Brooklyn accent,
carried a union card which he showed off proudly to show he was a
bricklayer. What the hell was this all
about?

That's what Chris
thought all the way back, both had stopped off for donuts and
coffee in Timucua City and were heading back to Trentville to see
if they could dig up some identification on the man. "Off all the
damn crazy stuff I've seen ..." Chris said. "Crazy as this fog?"
Frank said, it was still very foggy at this time which is
somewhat unusual. "Nah', I think the fog might have a slight edge
but still ... what's this all about? Why leave a corpse there?"
Chris asked. "Ya' know, I once watched a mob documentary once
where this hitman had left the body of a rat in a public spot so
it could be a message to other rats not to squeal to the Feds."
Frank said.

"But what would the mob
would be ... the fuckin' bricklayer!" Chris said. "What about the
... oh shit. We had him, we fuckin' had him." Frank said. Chris
pulled out his cell-phone and called Sal. "Hey Sal, it's me
Chris. Where is that bricklayer we talked to, you know the
fisherman with the Brooklyn accent?" "Oh, he just left to go
fishing, thought you said not to hold him
..."

"Well put out a search
for him, he might be our guy. And be careful, he may be mobbed up
and pretty well armed." Chris put the cell-phone away before
smacking the steering whell, "Damn, the chief is going to be
pissed, right in front of us and we let him go, he's probably
long gone by now." Chris was still pissed when he got back to
Trentville, the guy was indeed gone, didn't return, left the key
and a hundred for the owner by the bed ... but he was far from
gone, he was still in the area, searching for someone and he was
going to find them.